THOUSANDS of trade unionists marched through the streets of Ukraine’s capital Kiev yesterday in protest against looming rises in household bills.

Marchers were furious at higher prices expected in September after the government abolished preferential tariffs for private citizens in April.

Although it is not clear how steep the rise will be, workers worry that the growing utility bills will eat up their shrinking wages.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman met protest leaders, pledging to find a compromise.

Ukraine’s economy has been in decline since the US and EU-backed far-right coup in Kiev that led to civil war with anti-fascists in the east.

A financial bailout by Western backers of the coup-regime was accompanied by the customary austerity conditions.

Working-class representation in parliament was curtailed last year when the regime banned the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) from standing in elections.

Yesterday, the party condemned last week’s arrest of former KPU MP Alla Aleksandrovska in the city of Kharkiv for infringement of territorial integrity of Ukraine — a charge commonly used for those who oppose the war in the Donbass.

The KPU said it was “dismayed and outraged” that instead of improving the lives of Ukrainians, the government had waged a war against opposition to the “anti-national course of the reformers.”

“Far-fetched arguments can not justify the arrest Alla Aleksandrovska and persecution for dissent of our comrades,” it said.

The party demanded her release along with other imprisoned comrades.